Sometimes, I feel it is my fate to chase you
by swampophelia
Summary: Title: Sometimes, I feel it is my fate to chase you screaming up a tower, or make you cower  Summary: This is a post-Enjambment fic, taking some ideas I have not yet published from Dia my super secret unfinished Inception spec screenplay. My swan song.


**Title: Sometimes, I feel it is my fate to chase you screaming up a tower, or make you cower  
Rating: T  
Word Count: 2,053  
Summary: This is a post-Enjambment fic, taking some ideas I have not yet published from Dia my super secret unfinished Inception spec screenplay.  
Disclaimer: If I had any rights at all, that supposed Inception-like TV show would actually BE an INCEPTION TV show. Alas, fanfic is all I can do.  
A/N: This is my official contribution to the Architects Valentine's day Challenge. This is officially my swan song for a while. I've already talked to ****thursdays_girl** about my stepping back from modding duties for a bit. Don't worry folks, I will be back just not sure when.

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Sometimes, she thinks that a baritone or bass would be a better fit with the intensity he gives off, but his tenor matches his pale eyes and hair. It reminds her that the darkness isn't everything, that it doesn't consume him and therefore does not consume her. She muses in the shadow, observing the man as he slumbers next to her in their sweltering hotel room.

The air is sweltering in Tangiers, and they are staying in some nondescript hotel frequented by white men ostensibly doing not-so-legal business. In countries like these, she's learned over the years that the four-star hotels are carefully monitored and the rundown, rickety inns were actually more so. And they wanted to be monitored. The team wanted to be picked up, because the Mark was the key to making Dreamsharing legal in the Southern Hemisphere.

So much work to do and so little time. But tonight is the calm before the storm. They've worked too long and too hard to make Dreaming real for everyone else. Her thoughts jump around between why she was in Morocco and the reality two inches away from her face. How everything she had done since she turned twenty five was tied to Dom Cobb.

xxxx

His dreams became hers – as if a gravitational pull locked her to his psyche. The moment they were all supposed to split apart was the moment she found she could not pull away.

She never felt herself inadequate or inferior before, but that was because she never wanted something so _unattainable, impossible_ before.

So she did as she was told – she went home. In Paris, she found ways to be in Professor Miles classes and they would often exchange long glances. He approached her, wondering aloud when she changed her Masters Thesis to Architecture Theory and New Methods and already knowing full well the reason why. Joy emanates from him whenever his grandchildren are brought up, speaking nonstop about how happy they were. But he remained recalcitrant to talk about the source of that joy, his son-in-law.

This stinginess with information gave her pause. _Is something wrong?_ But he would only fall into a bemused silence and switch the topic back to her Doctoral Thesis (she decided to go full steam ahead in academia a few months back) and the legitimate firms she should be interning soon and the competitions she needed to start joining. She needed to build teams for the competitions, and for the experience of dealing with such strong, diverse personalities she would be grateful to Cobb and Miles forever.

Sometimes she would ask him why he chose her, and again he would evade her questions by simply stating "Isn't it enough for you to know I have faith in you?"

Then came graduation and she wonders if maybe Dom Cobb and Dreaming was a dream (bad pun intended). Then she sees them, approaching her from the parkway as she was smoothing the wrinkles from her graduation gown. And behind Eames and Arthur, Cobb was carrying Philippa and James and they were everything she imagined them to be.

xxxx

"Cobb was appointed Director of the CAT," brags Arthur.

"The CAT? What?," Ariadne mumbles through her second helping of crème catalan. Two weeks after graduation, they decided that she had to tag along in their Europe-in-three-weeks vacation with the children. They were enjoying tapas in this outdoor restaurant and she figured screw it, she wanted desert first never mind if it was gauche.

"It just means the Central Assessment Team," explains Cobb. "It's a very innocuous name for a bunch of Dream operatives."

"Most of whom were formerly Dream thieves," interjects Eames.

"Speak for yourself," Arthur responds dryly.

Eames glares at the thinner man, his incredulousness plain as day. "So says the gentleman thief to the former SAS agent."

"Who was dishonorably discharged. Are we really going to play this because I can go toe-to-toe with you Mr. Eames."

"Gentlemen, please." Cobb's tone brooked no disobedience, and the men quickly fell in line. "I don't want my newest recruit put off with the idea of long-term exposure to this kind of noise pollution. She might ask me for hazard pay."

"I think she already made it quite clear that hazard pay is a given with you as her boss," quips Ariadne, her open smile matching his own playful grin.

"I was afraid she'd ask for double hazard pay," he teased.

"Is there such a thing?," she counters, her head tilting as she involuntarily leaned closer.

"Thank goodness all the lawyers are Stateside, I wouldn't want her getting ideas," Cobb says, leaning into her as well.

A cough interrupts and both architects turn to the other gentlemen on the table. Eames and Arthur looking decidedly uncomfortable.

"Uhhh… yeah. Um, it's best for Ariadne to go through the whole procedure first. She needs to go through the same formal training we did when we got started…"

"Arthur, you went through the pilot course and you know now how inadequate that was. You didn't even finish all the modules before you dropped out of the Program. That's why Miles is taking care of creating that division once we secure DARPA funding."

Cobb turns to Ariadne again and informs her that Miles would no longer be teaching at the College, but instead was brought back to the Agency.

"Brought back?"

"He was the very first Architect," explains Cobb. "He brought me in to help design the levels and the first Dreamshare pilots."

And so it went for another week. Cobb and the others recount the history of Dreamsharing as they traipse around Venice and Luxembourg and finally coming back to Paris with two very cultured children who just wanted to go home to Disneyland at the end of it all.

Miles had wanted her to establish a real life cover through work in a real architecture firm, but Cobb countered that the Somna Group, the Agency's cover, is a legitimate global corporation with plenty of real SCIF (Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility) work for an architect to do.

"But really Cobb, what do we do?" she asked him when he dropped her off at her apartment, Phil and James with Marie and Stephen (it was strange to call him that, especially since Cobb still insisted on calling him Miles despite the familial affiliation. _I just got used to it, he says._)

"We make Dreaming real," he answers simply.

Ariadne stared at him blankly. "What does that even mean?"

"We're going to make Dreaming legal eventually. It's currently at the lowest classified level, considering there was so much private funding and effort to develop the Somnacin and the PASIV. It's still classified though which is why it was illegal to use Dreaming the way we did," Cobb explains as he leaned against her doorway, his tone barely audible.

"But, you were stealing ideas," Ariadne recalls, her faced scrunched up in confusion. "Isn't that going to be illegal either way?"

"CAT works on HUMINT, which technically isn't illegal as long as it is in the interest of national security. Private interest on the other hand is another story," Cobb responds. "And before you ask, HUMINT essentially means old fashioned espionage."

"Why didn't you just say so?"

"Because you're going to be part of the intelligence community now Ariadne, you might as well get used to the terminology. You know, if I'm going to keep on explaining maybe you want me to come in?"

Ariadne lets Cobb into her apartment. It is the last night she stays there and the only time he stayed over. He left in the wee hours of the morning convinced that he would trust the diminutive woman with his life, but he couldn't be trusted with hers.

_I'd like to be your second look._

xxxx

Ten years and it has actually been _fun_. He was fun. Home was where the children were.

Xxxx

He shows her the world. She becomes a part of his. Then she runs. The chase begins.

Xxx

"Don't be an idiot Cobb."

Cobb just looks at Arthur somberly, his expression unreadable.

"Phil and James miss her."

"Don't you bring them into this," hisses Cobb, ever sensitive about the children.

Arthur tried to communicate with him without words, for at times like these words often failed them. Ariadne had always been the only person that broke Dom Cobb down and she was nowhere to be found. At first he thought one of the field missions had gone bad, but he was surprised to discover that Ariadne's clearance was being revoked and this was because she actually **resigned**. Then a few days after, he found out she was not even in the US anymore but was actually in Sydney.

"Cobb, what did you do?"

"She chose, Arthur. She chose."

Arthur was stunned speechless. Ariadne chose Sam.

"Cobb, you are an idiot. And Sam still works here?"

Xxxx

The bass beats filtered through into the alley behind the club. She passed him the envelope and was about to go back inside but Cobb held her by the wrist.

"I can't stay out here too long."

"I'm not going to blow your cover. Please don't forget I have been doing this a bit longer," pulling her closer to him, his lips brushing her forehead.

They stand stock still, for what seems like years. "How's married life?" he asks hesitantly.

"Dom, you know what a two-year cover entails right?" she answers the question underpinning his query. She doesn't tell him she's been as faithful as possible because it doesn't mean anything. She misses her children, but she was never their mother (but they still love her and remember her fondly).

He holds her a little longer. She allows herself to kiss his mouth, wondering how long it will be this time before she forgets his taste. Soon though, soon Sam would establish the on ground bases in all the major Dreamcade markets and then, _then_, she could come home.

Xxxx

She never goes into deep cover again. Not by herself. No one questions that the Deputy Director of the Agency is marrying the Chief Architect. There were no more non-fraternization rules to deal with once the Agency is removed from Navy and DoD supervision.

They no longer serve national interests, but rather an international alliance under the G7. When Dreamshare becomes public, all hell breaks loose. The Board is like the United Nations, bogged down by bureaucracy and a great deal of political maneuvering that is frightening. Dom requests to be assigned back to the CAT – field ops had always been his area of expertise. The Board eventually gives in (Saito sits on the Board after all).

Xxxx

Ten years and the totality of it had been _fun_. He was fun. Home was where the children were. Tonight they were in the next room, the first pick in the Dream Apprentice program. There were no murmurs of nepotism or favoritism at all.

Xxxx

_And certain things we might exchange_

_Something familiar for something strange. _

"You're right."

Ariadne lifts her face and finds herself caught in his gaze. She wasn't sure if he meant the debrief with Hayden had gone exactly as she had predicted it would, or whether Sam had bowed out as she hoped he would.

"About what exactly?" a perfectly shaped brow rising on one side.

"I'd like to be your only audience, The final name in your appointment book, Your future tense."

She waited for him to continue, because she had no idea where he was going with this. There were times when she felt that she was plopped in the middle of a conversation when it came to him. In the middle of grief, in the middle of redemption, in the middle of saving the world, in the middle of a love story. There were too many times that she had stepped out of it that she wasn't exactly sure when she was back in.

He held her hand as he closed the distance between them. "There's always more than one great love story. You were right."

She couldn't help but smirk. "See? Your life would be much easier if you just agreed with me all the time. You know that now right?"

_Yes. Yes he did. But he wouldn't ever tell her that.  
_

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Poetry quotes from **Valentine by John Fuller**  
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